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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27782857">Small Intimacies</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard'>newsbypostcard</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>[rqg] small intimacies [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Grey Ace Zolf Smith, Intimacy, M/M, Personal Histories, Post-RQG177, Scars, Tattoos, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 00:49:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,442</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27782857</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>{Post RQG177}: Every day Zolf touches Wilde with no idea how he’s alive. Every night, unsleeping, Zolf channels positive energy into him, palms flat to his skin. It probably doesn’t do anything, but it can’t hurt. </p><p>Gods, it can’t hurt.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>[rqg] small intimacies [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2029948</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>135</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Small Intimacies</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Again, neither Zolf nor Wilde does violence in this fic; Zolf remembers gory details of past violence. Passing mentions of past canonical <b>major character death</b> are part of the story, and the physical and emotional scars of that reversed character death are expanded upon.</p><p>(inb4 alex newall razes a path of destruction through our hearts and minds with the inevitable consequences of mass resurrection?? me out here writing 10k in 5 days... i'm fine, stop asking. usual mutual bother society gratitude to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/starstrung">starstrung</a> and <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawkcycle">hawkcycle</a> for much consultation on this fic, but especially for discussion of zolf’s tattoos… he has them.)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><br/>
</p><p>The joke is that they’ll probably die before they retire for good, but they can retire for the night, and so together they do. </p><p>No one is subtle about noticing. Hamid smirks visibly into his tea whenever Zolf and Wilde so much as stand next to each other. Cel punches Zolf softly in the shoulder every time they cross paths, saying something to the effect of “Wow, you know, it’s really great to see you so happy! I’m really, I’m happy for you both,” despite that Wilde only smiles when it’s necessary to get a point across and Zolf’s preferred a scowl for the last twenty years. </p><p>Most mortifying of all, Azu’s taken to leaning her chin in one hand and beaming at them whenever they both happen into her sight at the same time. Even Barnes has made his remarks to Zolf about Wilde’s ‘swift recovery’ sound lurid, which leaves Zolf no choice but to pull Barnes down by the shirt just to cuff him on the head.</p><p>He and Wilde agreed at the top not to publicly change any aspect of their behaviour—and why should they? As far as business goes, their existing systems function fine. They may nominally operate as more of a pair than before, but really they’d paired off long ago, all the way back in Warsaw when it became clear Barnes had the highest tolerance of the lot for Carter’s nonsense. </p><p>As before, Wilde rises at dawn; as before, Zolf finds him sitting alone not too long later, taking his tea with a straight back and rigid shoulders—Zolf will have to work that tension out of him later. As before, Zolf sits down across from him and waits to receive the dispatch of the day; but whereas before Wilde gave him a clipped verbal distillation of the facts, now the dispatch comes in the form of a neat stack of paper.</p><p>Whatever intelligence Wilde’s finished with and decided Zolf’s allowed to see—one of their new intimacies. Zolf doesn’t get everything, and even this much was hard won—the result of a bitter argument where the balance between the mission and their affection was upended, shattered, and pieced together again. 

</p><p>“You’ve already died once,” Zolf shouted at him then, temper already lost—“What am I supposed to do when you’re gone?”</p><p>He’d meant to say: <em>How am I meant to save the world if you won’t tell me how to do it without you?</em> But as often happens these days, he said the other thing, the thing really on his mind—the thing he’s actually worried about, instead of what the mission demands.</p><p>As also often happens these days, Wilde had stared at him; taken in both meanings, and replied with too much patience in his voice. “There’s no unlearning what I already know. And as you are plainly aware that what I know may get me killed all over again, I’m disinclined to condemn anyone else to the fate. Forgive me for being withholding, Zolf; I’m only saving your life.” </p><p>“That’s stupid,” Zolf said, clipped.</p><p>“No, it’s very smart. It’s the least I can do.”</p><p>“The least you can do? Not for my sake it’s not.”</p><p>Wilde had put down his papers and looked Zolf in the eye. “I need you,” he said deliberately, adding, “on this team. I need you in this fight, among other things. If you’re dead, you won’t be.” </p><p>“That’s exactly what I’m saying. You can’t throw my argument out the window and then turn it against me. I’m wise to your tricks, Wilde.”</p><p>“Certainly I can. I just have.”</p><p>“Well—look. Fine, then.” Zolf spread his arms, let them clap against his sides. “I’m here. Part of this mission. Include me in it. Share your burden.”</p><p>“I’m already sending you into the fray—”</p><p>“You’re not <em>sending</em> me anywhere.”</p><p>“—which is burden enough. Your well being is my responsibility—”</p><p>“Like hell.”</p><p>“You know perfectly well the burdens of leadership,” Wilde said, prim again, and Zolf knew he was getting somewhere. “Weren’t you responsible for it in Paris when Hamid came to harm? Bertie was part of <em>your</em> team; I happen to know you blamed yourself when Sasha—” Zolf flinched. “There now, see? Only here’s the kicker: you didn’t send them to Paris. I did.”</p><p>“That’s not true.”</p><p>“Actually, it is. I’m responsible for—” </p><p>“Now you stop that. I hired them. I led them into it; more than that, we went by choice. We all chose it, Wilde. That’s…” <em>Part of the job</em>, he wanted to say; but was that what he believed? Should a mercenary’s work take all that it did—Sasha’s good health, his leg, his faith?</p><p>“Never mind,” said Wilde. “You already know my information will be sent to Curie should the worst come to pass, so—”</p><p>“Oh, really? Well, thank the gods for that. Curie will know, won’t that be useful. When’s the last time we heard from her? Six, seven months ago?”</p><p>“You won’t be alone, that’s all I meant.”</p><p>“I beg your fucking pardon,” Zolf said brusquely. “You’re wrong about that.”</p><p>Wilde looked at him, letting a slow breath out through his nose. “You have plenty others,” he said, controlled. “That’s the point of a team. You have Earhart—”</p><p>“Not this again, for crying out loud.”</p><p>“You were happy enough to take her commands…”</p><p>“Wilde, stop it.”</p><p>“First mate and whatnot.”</p><p>“Because I know my way around a ship, you thick git. Now that’s enough. It’s not her I’m shouting at.”</p><p>Wilde offered no rejoinder. His cheeks flushed when they argued these days.</p><p>“Besides which, you’ve changed the subject,” said Zolf. “In the event of your untimely demise—<em>again</em>—that leaves me and the rest of us trying to complete the mission without your information. Does that seem doable to you right now?”</p><p>“In the event of my untimely demise, the mission is void and you should return to Curie for orders.” </p><p>“Right. That’s my loyalty, to the Harlequins.”</p><p>“It should be.”</p><p>“Oh, for… You know as well as I do we’re effectively rogue since we left Europe. I don’t fancy figuring out how to get in touch with her only for her to deny me access to your bloody information, since she has no way of knowing I am who I say I am. You want me to travel all that way and spend a week in quarantine only for her not to tell me anything? She trusts <em>you</em>, Wilde, not me.”</p><p>“She doesn’t trust me.”</p><p>“It’s a matter of scale. The point I’m making is that she’s not telling me shite, <em>especially</em> since you won’t—”</p><p>“It’s not a matter of trust.”</p><p>“Of course it is! Of course it bloody well is. You think I can’t handle it, that this information is too sensitive for… what, my delicate constitution?”</p><p>“It’s not about the <em>information.</em> I won’t put you in harm’s way—”</p><p>“So we’re back to square one. You die, the rest of us are in the dark. You said it yourself: the mission is void. Is mission failure a risk you’re willing to take?”</p><p>Wilde stared at him with bitten lips, breathing hard.</p><p>“I don’t like to think about it any more than you do,” Zolf said. “But you were the one who told me this mission is bigger than just one person—”</p><p>“That was then.”</p><p>“So, what, you think I’m not at risk if I’m forced to piece together what you were trying to do? I’m at risk now. What changes?”</p><p>“More than you know.”</p><p>“You can’t protect me, any more than I can protect you. I think it’s high time we both—”</p><p>“Not from airship accidents, no,” Wilde cut in. “But this is something I <em>can</em> control. I won’t put you in the sights of the meritocrats.”</p><p>“What’s left of them.”</p><p>Wilde gave Zolf a sardonic look. They both knew better.</p><p>“I’m already associated with you,” said Zolf. “I’m already in their sights. Whether or not I actually have the information doesn’t matter. They already think I do.”</p><p>“Now that’s simply not true. You never worked for them, the risk’s not the same.”</p><p>“You’re not listening. No one can tell what I know or don’t know. Someone’s got it in their mind to kill you, they’ll probably kill me just for standing next to you. Besides which,” Zolf said, loudly drowning out Wilde’s objection, “you’re not <em>handling</em> me anymore. We’re a team now. Right? Haven’t we been?”</p><p>“I recruited you as a healer. I didn’t recruit a secondary information bank—”</p><p>Zolf growled in frustration. “Now you’re just being a bleeding martyr.” </p><p>“I tell you all this,” Wilde said, holding up a stack of files, “I condemn you with it. Good leadership is protecting your team, I won’t say it again.”</p><p>“You’re not condemning me! I’m choosing! I’m asking you! Look, is there… is there some test you want me to take to prove I’m worthy? I can’t force it, but unless there’s a better candidate I don’t know about…”</p><p>Wilde laughed, a hollow sound. “It’s not about trust.”</p><p>Zolf sighed, a hand at his brow. They were talking in circles. “Look. If you’re going to be too noble to do it for the proper reasons, at least admit you’re not fucking immortal.”</p><p>Wilde’s mouth quirked in the corner. “Well, I might be now.”</p><p>“No, don’t you joke. Don’t you joke with me when sitting vigil over your body is still fresh in my fucking mind. What we have is <em>fragile</em>, Wilde. The laws of the universe won’t get broken twice. Look at where we are, look at what we’re doing. Can we realistically finish the job without you? <em>This</em> job, the one we’ve been doing from bleedin’ Japan? Just let me in, Wilde, you daft bastard,” Zolf breathed, and he was surprised by the waver in it. “Share your burden before you collapse out from under it, for pity’s sake.”</p><p>So now Zolf gets the castoffs over morning tea.</p><p>This whole damned love business is downright embarrassing. He’d forgotten it; it’s been a long time. Couple these sorts of ridiculous arguments with the fact there’s a war going on, that the world’s fading away, that there’s apparently no end to the interests wanting Wilde dead—it’s all a bit much. Zolf feels constantly torn between reason and conviction: the knowledge that most of these things are out of his power, the fervent belief there’s something to be done about them anyway.</p><p>He misses the rules of Poseidon some days, the clarity that life had given him: he’d love to lead with logic, to choose the course of action that would save the most lives. He’d love to put the mission first—but of course he never has. Personal loyalties have always come first. It’s been his fatal flaw for years.</p><p>No wonder his faith in Poseidon dissolved. At least he knows what’s driving him now.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<p></p><div>
  <p>*</p>
</div><p><br/>
</p><p>It isn’t all work. The point of them retiring together is to stop the endless arguments over how the other never rests. </p><p>They still aren’t necessarily restful. Wilde’s wounds are as healed as they’re going to get, at least on the surface; there will be deep tissue damage for months to come. Zolf can’t work miracles, try as he might. Wilde consents to letting him rub a salve over his scars every night in the hopes of helping them fade, but Zolf still jolts awake every time Wilde wheezes in sleep—presses a palm against his ribs, stares awake through the dark. </p><p>Something finally pierced that guarded, restless heart. </p><p>The scars on Wilde’s back are indescribably worse than what’s on his chest. Wilde will never see them clearly; Zolf’s thankful for that. He’s thankful for a lot of things. By the gods, Zolf’s tried to forget it, but the difference is feeling the life in him in all sorts of ways—alive, Wilde can’t be mistaken for idle. Even with his head bent over his work, even lounging in bed, even dead asleep, he has a presence.</p><p>Corporeal form is so fragile. Zolf’s known it for years, feels it through to his fingers every time he wills tissue to mend. He thought he’d learned the lesson for good putting Sasha’s organs back into her body, but every day there are new limits to test. </p><p>Every day Zolf touches Wilde with no idea how he’s alive. Every night, unsleeping, Zolf channels positive energy into him, palms flat to his skin. It probably doesn’t do anything, but it can’t hurt. </p><p>Gods, it can’t hurt.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<p></p><div>
  <p>*</p>
</div><p><br/>
</p><p>The trouble with acting neutrally in the public eye is the transition between states: gentility, fragility, isn’t meant to be seen by the rest of the world. When the door is closed, they shed their winter clothes and armour with their backs to each other, trying to remember how to be vulnerable again.</p><p>Small intimacies find them in these moments of liminal space. Oscar sees Zolf removing his prosthetics after an especially long day and watches, hands frozen in unbuttoning his shirt.</p><p>“Do they bother you?” asks Wilde.</p><p>Zolf looks over his shoulder. It was Wilde to recommend engineering specialists to get them built and fitted, surgeons to get the ports installed. Zolf owes him for that, which of course Wilde denies. “Only the best for you, Mr. Smith,” Wilde used to say in those dismissive tones, and asked exactly once if they were comfortable enough. Zolf had thought at the time it was part of the trade: Zolf gives his time to Wilde’s Harlequin crew, and in return gets legs that aren’t contingent on his faith. </p><p>Zolf wonders what Wilde’s motives were now. It might still have been only a trade. </p><p><em>Do they bother you</em> is a different question, an inquiry into Zolf’s general state. “No, they don’t bother me,” Zolf answers. It’s true. He’s not sure what, if any, magic was worked, but Zolf only notices he’s even wearing them on the very long days.</p><p>Wilde nods and ambles his way across the room, his shirt half-undone. “Can I…”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“I don’t know, help?”</p><p>Wilde means well, but the idea mortifies Zolf. “No,” he says gruffly. “Let me handle it, would you?”</p><p>To his relief, Wilde does, but he sits next to Zolf while taking off his shirt. Casually, he watches Zolf’s hands at work. As the weeks pass, Zolf’s gaining the impression that Wilde is interested in his hands in general: their certainty, maybe, or just what Zolf does with them.</p><p>Zolf should, he thinks, be embarrassed of this. Taking off his prosthetics often feels like taking his own freedom away, makes him dependent on the patience of others in the event of an emergency. But Zolf giving his tired legs a break, letting Wilde learn how he takes them off—it’s like how Zolf can tell these days by how loud Wilde sighs how much tension he carries in his back. It just seems like something someone else should know.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<p></p><div>
  <p>*</p>
</div><p><br/>
</p><p>More and more, they learn to close the space sooner. The door closes to the world and Wilde relaxes, bit by bit. They’d needed the buffer at first, too used to pushing away, too afraid of the intimacy they mutually craved—now is mostly the craving. They fall into ritual: pick something to pretend to argue about as they take off their shoes, as Wilde lights a fire, as he sits on the bed and lets Zolf kneel over him, aloe in hand.</p><p>Some cautious experimentation had revealed the magical curse on Wilde was broken in death. He’d realised some days ago he can once again put fire in the hearth with a click of his fingers, and had done so with delight. Zolf’s gotten used to seeing him without magic, but Wilde manifests it with effortlessness, as though in natural extension of himself. Light and glamour, fire and warmth. Zolf never used to buy into the notion that a person’s magic says anything about them, but maybe there’s something to the idea.</p><p>Tonight they are silent after a few days apart. “You know he’s a holy terror when you’re gone,” Barnes said idly when he’d shown up to help the field crew clean their gear, and Zolf had shoved Azu’s chestplate hard into Barnes’ arms to shut him up—but Zolf sees it in Wilde now, the way his shoulders won’t bend. The way his body stays turned in Zolf’s direction. 

</p><p>He looks tired. Zolf knows the feeling; he hadn’t slept right in days himself. Still, he plans on taking his time—to take up his rituals and worship, to take Wilde’s body under his hands and remember the totality of his warmth. Pull his fingers across the planes of his muscles, the ridges of scars, knead the tension out of him until Wilde’s gone pliant beneath him.</p><p>Their armour shed, the fire lit, Zolf settles into Wilde’s lap on the bed. He sets the healing salve beside him, then slips the topmost button on Wilde’s shirt free. Zolf admires him in the firelight. He likes to look at Oscar, to slide his fingers gently under the hem of Wilde’s shirt—to feel the hot pulse of his skin. To tease or spoil him with casual touch.</p><p>Oscar likes to be admired. But that’s always been true.</p><p>Oscar also likes to admire Zolf, which has taken more adjustment. Zolf thought at first Wilde’s insistence of his at least partial nudity was leftover from blue vein paranoia, but he was wrong about that. “I’m not going to be the only one without my clothes on,” Wilde had said the first time he’d tried to pull off Zolf’s shirt. “Think of the scandal.”</p><p>“The scandal,” Zolf said flatly. “Here we are, plainly sharing quarters—”</p><p>“Precisely. Think of the stories we’d have to concoct if they <em>didn’t</em> find us out of clothes.”</p><p>Wilde had a point there. “I’m perfectly happy to—”</p><p>“Strip me down and have your way with me without losing a stitch, I’m well aware,” Wilde said, demure. “That’s all fine and good; you should express yourself as you please, Zolf. If you prefer to be my undoing without my lifting a finger, who am I to argue.”</p><p>“Thank you.”</p><p>“But I do like to look at you,” Wilde said as Zolf groaned, “and you already know I find you exceptionally handsome.” Zolf hadn’t known that, in point of fact, but he wasn’t about to admit it. “I also happen to know you’re not shy of your body—”</p><p>“Oh, don’t use your Machiavellian prison experiment as some sort of—”</p><p>“By the end I’d swear you were trying to impress me. All of that flexing…”</p><p>He had been, but that was beside the point. “Handsome is fine. Let’s not pretend—”</p><p>“I’m not pretending,” Wilde said, and slipped a hand under the hem of Zolf’s shirt. He’d gripped at his flank, his palm hot on Zolf’s skin, and Zolf was struck by the surety of it. Wilde was always seeking something, pulling at him, grasping around for something to hold. “I mean it.”</p><p>Zolf <em>isn’t</em> shy of his body—enough years in the Navy had cured him of that—and he’s long suspected he might be fit by human standards just from the way Barnes looks at him in passing. But humans are a notoriously judgmental species, and Wilde notoriously vain. He’d assumed Wilde would want someone beautiful, like Bertie, like Barnes—like Wilde himself. </p><p>Zolf trusts that Wilde likes him well enough, but never thought it might be for his looks. He’s learning what it means to be loved by an aesthete: the lack of reason, the shape of beauty’s desire. Wilde looks at him and sees a work of art, whether Zolf sets out to be one or not.</p><p>The tattoos surely contribute. Wilde is fascinated by them—acquired from Zolf’s clan, his time in the Navy, the pirates, his faith. Too many to name, though Zolf finds he can explain each one when Wilde points to it, memories clear for them all. Poseidon’s symbol sits over his heart, his home temple’s designation etched over his ribs. Wilde’s fingers trace it in idleness—Zolf’s life juxtaposed. It seems silly to carry all this on him now; a lot of his tattoos don’t speak to who he is or what he wants from his life. But it does tell the story of where he’s been—what he’s lived, who he’s become. </p><p>Wilde likes to hear about all that. He’s always asking for stories, pointing to ink to hear how it was made. Zolf is hardly a natural storyteller; he lacks Campbell’s skill or Wilde’s grace with embellishment. But he takes Wilde into his arms and murmurs small histories, Wilde’s fingers twisting in Zolf's beard until he’s fallen asleep.</p><p>Someday Zolf will tell him about the tattoos he’s lost—the ones that used to adorn his ankles, his calfs. There’s time enough for that. For now, surface matters: growing accustomed to pulling each other in, sharing mutual reverence at the end of the day.</p><p>Here it is. Here they are. Zolf undoes a second button on Wilde’s shirt, knuckles the fabric gently aside. Reveals the hollow of his throat, the half-moon shadow it casts; caresses it with the pad of his thumb.</p><p>Wilde, meanwhile, pulls the tie from Zolf’s hair. He’s developed a fascination with running his fingers through it, Zolf couldn’t say why. “Did you wear it long when you were a cleric of Poseidon,” Wilde had asked him once, “in an effort to look as luscious as possible?”</p><p>“A <em>luscious</em> cleric? What good is that?”</p><p>“The wind in your hair, water suspending it loose around your head diving for treasure and whatnot…”</p><p>“Really, Oscar, what do you think a pirate does?”</p><p>“Are you Poseidon himself?” Wilde muttered, ignoring Zolf outright, lost in reverie. He’d combed his fingers through Zolf’s hair with plain adoration—the way he does now, with the same quiet bliss. “You can tell me if you are.”</p><p>Zolf’s hair grows like the dickens, but with no proper dwarven barber on hand, he’s contented himself with keeping it out of his face. Given that he’d shorn it off in the first place after coming in from the rain enough times in Japan looking like “a half-drowned snow leopard,” as Wilde had put it, Wilde’s positive feelings about it surprised him. </p><p>But Wilde is often surprising. Wilde pulls off Zolf’s shirt always looking faintly starved. Zolf doesn’t mind being arranged in Wilde’s image. He’s loved and been loved before, but not in this frantic and calculated way, full of edges and sorrow. He’d thought he might be the romantic one between them, but Oscar regularly knocks him arse over teakettle just saying what’s on his mind.</p><p>In service of the image of Zolf he prefers, Wilde undoes the top clasp of Zolf’s breeches and leaves off there, hand falling to the muscle of Zolf’s thigh. Well, let Zolf be admired. There’s light in Wilde’s eyes and life in his veins. Let him do what he wants.</p><p>Tangled together, they breathe as one. Zolf cups a hand at Wilde’s neck, passes a thumb over his pulse. Wilde’s eyes flicker closed, his erection bulging under Zolf’s thighs. There’s intimacy here, too—in feeling Oscar’s need, accepting it, and doing nothing about it. Oscar sighs and minutely shifts, wanting friction, doing little to find it, letting himself be gradually seduced.</p><p>To think they might have done this for months already, if only one of them had been less proud.</p><p>They linger here, taking their fill of each other. It isn’t that Oscar doesn’t front when they’re here; he does. His desire is a performative state, guileless pantomime. Gutting in its honesty.</p><p>“Don’t,” Wilde says, when Zolf’s fingers pass over the scar on his face. It's the first word uttered since they’ve stepped in, the first flicker in the veneer. </p><p>Zolf had only meant to get reacquainted, but he lets Wilde pull his hand away, watches him press a kiss to his palm. “I wasn’t going to do anything.”</p><p>“You’ve got scar remover in your hands.”</p><p>“It’s not scar remover, it helps. Besides which, it’s over there.”</p><p>“Leave it alone, Zolf. You know better.”</p><p>Wilde had been rabid about this scar from the start—Zolf had half-carried Wilde out of that bar while Barnes and Carter took care of the bastard that gave it to him. Blood streamed through Wilde’s fingers where they pressed to his face. No amount of objection that healing these things was why Zolf was there, that they could take the cuffs off for a second if it meant he stopped bleeding like this, made the least bit of difference. It was the only time Wilde has ever actually yelled at him—dropped all pretence, screamed at Zolf to get away from him, the first and only time Zolf’s ever seen him broken down. </p><p>Even when the blood didn’t stop blotting the fabric for hours, even as the nerve damage became clear in the days and weeks that followed—Zolf wasn’t allowed anywhere near it. No one was. Wilde permitted no intervention of any kind—he changed that day, became withholding and temperamental. Zolf had tried not to take offense and failed. He felt himself pulling back to match Wilde’s guarded state, and it’d taken months for them to get back where they were, weeks before Wilde could speak to him in a warmish tone. </p><p>Wilde’s never talked about any part of it—never explained who that contact was, or why Wilde met with him in spite of suspicions. Zolf never heard a word they said to each other in that bar; he was sitting too far away; he knew only the flash of magic, the fast splatter of blood, the way Wilde was never the same.</p><p>Zolf should consider himself lucky. At least Wilde lets him dress his new scars. </p><p>Zolf brushes Wilde’s shirt off one shoulder, lays it bare. He nods his understanding, but the moment hangs. There won’t be a better time, there won’t be a lesser risk.</p><p>He lets the care in his silence settle over them, taking a breath. “Who was he, Wilde?”</p><p>Wilde looks up sharply, then turns evasive at once—eyes falling askance, body shifting under Zolf’s weight. Zolf wouldn’t have considered asking before now; already this is a much better reaction than he expected. Zolf isn’t on the floor, for one thing. </p><p>“Does it matter?” Wilde clips.</p><p>“Seems like it matters a great deal.”</p><p>Wilde studies him, shrewd. There’s something in his eyes, a shadow Zolf’s unsure of. Then, as though it was never there, Wilde’s expression changes completely; he pulls the gold circlet gently from the end of Zolf’s beard. </p><p>“Have you ever been in love before?” Wilde asks.</p><p>Zolf scoffs faintly. “What d’you think this is, play-acting?”</p><p>“Before me, you numpty.” He drags his fingers gently between the plaints of Zolf’s beard, never pulling, a faint smile on his lips.</p><p>“Once or twice,” Zolf says, weak for him.</p><p>“Once <em>or</em> twice?”</p><p>“Hardly keep a ledger.”</p><p>Wilde laughs, a sharp note of delight. “Surely you’ve <em>noticed</em>.”</p><p>“I notice when I care for someone, true enough. Don’t take to bed with most of ‘em.”</p><p>“I daresay you <em>cared</em> for me before we took to bed.”</p><p>Zolf can’t muster a reply, which says enough. Only so many times he could hear his own denial before he found the lie in it.</p><p>“Does that make the difference?” Wilde asks. “Whether or not you take to bed with them?”</p><p>Now Zolf studies him. Wilde’s mouth sometimes runs when Zolf takes his cock in hand—asks Zolf how he does this, how he has this kind of patience, how he can stand to make this kind of love. He asks it while thrusting into Zolf’s hand like his life depends upon his completion—and Zolf knows he’s a capable lover. It’s something he takes pride in, regardless of his predilection for making use of the skill. Wilde likes Zolf’s control, he likes his patience, likes that Zolf makes him wait for it—likes when Zolf denies attention to the most pressing of his needs, when he saves it, when Zolf undresses him slowly and makes it all last. He likes the way Zolf acts like they’re not pressed for time, like they don’t lose a minute of sleep for every minute spent like this. Wilde’s prick hardens and Zolf takes conversational tones, asks him questions like it isn't there. Gets a proper grip on him before giving Wilde what he wants. </p><p>Wilde likes it all. He likes the steadfast dedication of Zolf’s attention, the diversity of it. Zolf evaluates him, interrogates him. Zolf undoes him with his mouth and hands and spirit and mind, and Wilde shakes with it, acts like he’s been waiting for it all this time, accepts it like Zolf offers deliverance. </p><p>When Zolf puts his hands on him—it’s become an act deeper than words can describe. That Wilde consents to let Zolf help the impalement scars fade is healing to them both—but it’s more than that. Some remembrance is necessary, other reminders too fulsome to bear. Zolf does a lot of touching in his line of work and rarely finds it sensual, but Wilde’s body—the movement of it, the tension, the yield—sparks something in him. Each night Zolf kneads his thumbs into the tension of Wilde’s back, rides Wilde’s body through his hisses and sighs, and feels something new and powerful form and calcify within him. </p><p>Wilde is a glorious, sensual being. He guides Zolf’s desire in embodying his own. Yes, it makes a difference.</p><p>“You’re a rare creature, Oscar,” Zolf tells him.</p><p>Wilde’s smile is slow, unexpectedly shy. It’s shockingly easy to find Oscar these days. “That’s not why I asked,” he says, his cheeks tingeing a warm, healthy pink when Zolf lifts the shirt off his other shoulder. Wilde watches it fall. He pulls his arms out of the fallen sleeves one at a time, tips his head back when Zolf brushes a hand near the base of his neck—his eyes flicker closed. Such an easy get.</p><p>“It’s relevant,” Zolf mutters, train of thought half-lost. “Not often I get like this, Wilde.”</p><p>“You fight it.”</p><p>“No. Well, a bit,” he admits, when Wilde opens an eye just to cast him a look. “Sometimes. But I—I do like it. Feeling… this way.”</p><p>Wilde laughs, easy. “Really? Because it sounded like it caused you pain just trying to say it.”</p><p>“I find it hard to bear. Doesn’t mean I don’t like it.”</p><p>“You’re very peculiar.”</p><p>“Not so peculiar. You find it hard to bear.”</p><p>“Of course I don’t,” Wilde scoffs.</p><p>Zolf offers a scathing look. “Then what in all hell took you so long?”</p><p>“I was waiting for you to come to your senses.”</p><p>“What a steaming pile of shite,” Zolf growls, brackish and low, and Wilde throw his head back and laughs with plain thrill. “You’re at least as terrified as me. Desire, that comes easy to you, that much I accept; just look at you.” Zolf tugs gently on his hair and watches Wilde’s pink lips part, feels his hips try to move. “Wanton willow of a man, what am I meant to do with you?”</p><p>Wilde’s fingers, vice-like at Zolf’s hip, soften and soothe in contrition. “You know what you drive me to,” Wilde says, only sounding faintly strained. “It’s not my fault. <em>I’m</em> the victim here, and yet here you sit—torturing me, acting like <em>you</em> have it so very hard…”</p><p>“I don’t have it hard. You make me very lucky.”</p><p>That takes the mockery out of Wilde’s voice right quick. “You know it damns us both when you’re so sincere.”</p><p>“That’s what I mean. Love guts you the way it does me, admit it.”</p><p>Wilde tries to shift again, but Zolf gives him nothing; rides his body like a wave. “Fine,” Wilde sniffs; “tell me about the others who have gutted you.”</p><p>“<em>Why?</em>”</p><p>“I want to know what informs this stubborn patience you use to drive me insane.”</p><p>There have been a good few lovers. Zolf doesn’t take to sex with any particular urgency and it rarely occurs to him to seek it out, but, like gambling, he finds it an acceptable way to pass the time. Any sailor encounters spates of time better wiled away in physical company, especially in winter. Less frequent are feelings like these—the drive to provide Wilde with anything he wants extends to carnal pleasure with surprising severity. That responsive sensuality, making a home. </p><p>“It’s been years, in any case.” Zolf thinks of the only one that still matters, the only lover or overly familiar friend he still thinks about. “Back in my mining days… gods, I don’t know. Twenty years back,” he says, and grabs the healing salve from beside him on the bed. He’s determined to make himself useful, if Oscar’s going to ask him for one of his stories. “Not sure how much you know about mining castes—dwarves of one clan are typically promised to another at a reasonably young age in my region. It promotes trade, strengthens political ties… a process of matchmaking occurs to find the right marriageable partner within the new clan, followed by a lengthy engagement to confirm compatibility. Yeah,” Zolf says, nodding at Wilde’s fleeting expression of alarm. “Needless to say, I hated it.”</p><p>“I don’t blame you.”</p><p>“On top of that, our family was a special exception—new enough to mining that they wanted my brother and me to marry within the clan. Bolster their numbers, affirm our commitment to the lifestyle. I always hated mining, so all options were horrible, but this agreement meant I wasn’t even going to be permitted to leave. I was born with my bags half-packed and only felt more constrained the older I got.”</p><p>“So your marriage was arranged.”</p><p>“No. I managed to meet someone in the clan who hated mining as much as me, who’d rejected two matches from outside the clan. We were considered the answer to each other’s problem.”</p><p>“Ahh,” Wilde says, smile strained. “True love.”</p><p>“Hate to admit it, but yeah, a bit. There might’ve been some truth to the idea we were right for each other. It only worked if we lied to ourselves and said we weren’t going to marry; wound up partners in all sorts of petty crimes trying to prove our rebellion. Truancy, half-arsed work, then the necessary labour to make it up… a lot of very passionate, ill-advised intercourse out of marriage, which wasn't frowned upon as much as our flagrant rejection of the notion of union was.” Under Zolf’s careful, aloed palms, Wilde’s ribs heave with laughter. “We were trying to get kicked out, of course, but our hearts weren’t quite in it. Neither one of us wanted to disappoint our bloodline. Hard to explain if you didn’t grow up with a clan, but we might’ve just thrown it in and married in the end.”</p><p>“But you didn’t.”</p><p>“And thank the gods for that. It would’ve been a mistake. We were too similar, two angry souls thrashing around. It only worked for as long we both wanted to leave. So long as we snuck up to the surface to watch the stars and spent our time talking about our adventuring lives, it was fine; but we fought as much as we got along. Our marriage would have been miserable, killed our affection.”</p><p>“Surely there was a third option,” Wilde says. He’s taken to braiding Zolf’s beard back together as Zolf dresses his scars. Devastatingly intimate, Zolf wonders if he knows how much. “Leaving together.”</p><p>“Oh, we meant to. Who knows how we’d have ended up.”</p><p>“But you left.”</p><p>“Actually, she did," says Zolf. "The same cave-in that derailed my life enabled her to sneak out of hers. Staged her own death, tried to convince me to go with her; but I was too embroiled in my own shite then. Never plucked up the courage to meet up with her, never saw her again.”</p><p>Wilde seems to have no reply. For a moment they focus on their mutual tasks, Wilde braiding, Zolf caressing Wilde’s ribs. </p><p>“What was it like?” Wilde asks, quiet.</p><p>“Losing her?”</p><p>“Wanting her.” Wilde slides the golden circlet back over the ends of his beard. “That made it different from the rest.”</p><p>Zolf sits back on his heels with a sigh. “Proof that I wasn’t the only one who wanted a different life, I suppose. She made me want more. <em>Better</em>.”</p><p>“Made you believe it was possible.”</p><p>“Yes,” says Zolf, gratified when Wilde meets his eye. “That’s it exactly.”</p><p>Silence falls, fulsome and warm. They still haven’t decided where they’re going on holiday. Wilde often asks and Zolf always delays with the same excuse: they don’t know how much of the world there is. But they agree to go somewhere warm, somewhere on the sea; the promise of it lives in their minds and on their tongues, a constant refrain. <em>I’ll buy you a new pocketwatch when we’re on holiday, and then you won’t have anything to complain about.</em></p><p>“There are other kinds of love, you know,” Wilde says, and his voice is so strange Zolf’s attention snaps to. “Bosie was… fantastically vain, unbearably fragile.” Zolf recognizes the name, Bosie—the man they met in the bar. The reason Wilde has that scar. “Turned on a dime if you didn’t give him what he wanted, and yet there you stood, compelled to give him everything.” Wilde laughs tinnily. “Or I was. You’d have probably met him and disliked him at once; you’re an awfully good judge of character. But he was <em>incredibly</em> beautiful, and easy to please, as long as you knew the right things to say and do. Sensual in a way I found unparalleled—at the time.” Zolf registers the caveat, tries not to preen. “There were costs to his affection, of course, but such were the rewards of his happiness that I wanted very much to make him happy. At any time. At any cost.” </p><p>Any shrewdness Zolf had worked out of Wilde since they entered the room is back in his eyes. The flames from the fire reflect in his gaze, focused aside in the middle distance. “He did nothing to assure me a better world was possible,” Wilde says, “and everything to assure me he was the best I’d ever have. And I believed him. I was happy to. I loved him madly, consumptively. I thought there could be no better; I am, after all, as vainglorious as him.”</p><p>“I doubt that’s true.”</p><p>“Well, ultimately it isn’t,” Wilde scolds, “but you’re getting ahead of me in the story.” Wilde’s fingers sit light at Zolf’s chest when he laughs, binding them together in the moment. “Our dalliance was as tempestuous as was his humour. When we fell out I felt like he’d taken the barrel of my chest away with him, like there was nothing left. Then we’d get back together and feel already long overdue for a split. He loved certain pleasures more than I did, and ultimately I held ambitions he lacked. He’d have been perfectly happy as a kept man, and I would have been happy to keep him. But such a mutual desire created the need for a steady stream of greater income than I was making, which required my attention to what wasn’t Bosie. He couldn’t abide that sort of thing.”</p><p>Zolf subdues a murderous impulse. Irrelevant now. “Hence meritocrats?”</p><p>“No, no,” Wilde breathes. “No, he left me for a succession of richer men long before I was brought into that world. Yes,” he adds when Zolf’s eyebrows shoot up. “After the meritocrats and my subsequent rise in status, of course, Bosie got back in touch, but another few months of dalliances and unkept promises later, he was gone just as fast. By then it was plain he was bad for business, and the meritocrats certainly wanted him gone. I might have missed him just as much, but I found myself increasingly relieved when he was gone. Are you sensing the moral?” Wilde asks Zolf, head raising to meet his eye. “Every time Bosie called, I came running. Regardless of where I was, regardless of what I was doing or what it cost—he was Bosie, and he was mine. No matter what he thought on the subject, I knew it to be true. So when Bosie’s telegram found me after well over a year of hearing neither hide nor hair—what did I do?”</p><p>“You went running,” Zolf says, quiet.</p><p>“And would you know,” says Wilde, “the first indication I had that things weren’t right wasn’t when he hurt me. That, I expected. It was when he was <em>kind</em> to me when he learned I couldn’t do magic.” Wilde smiles, more bitter than sweet. “A smarter man would have left then and there.”</p><p>Zolf remembers how Wilde had stopped in the doorway at the sight of him, just for a second—how he’d tugged on his waistcoat, his very best, to pull it taut. He remembers the way Bosie had given Wilde a strange sort of smile, a judgemental quality to it that Zolf couldn’t read; how Wilde had sat down beside him, squeezed to his leg in some too-intimate way, and then withdrawn. Zolf had suspected he’d once been a lover, but never suspected it had held any depth. </p><p>That Wilde might have found this greeting normal, typical of Bosie, upset Zolf with unimaginable force. </p><p>“He’s gone now, in any case,” Wilde says, heavy-tongued. “How he actually died, I suppose I’ll never know. Probably got involved in some kind of backroom tomfoolery he shouldn’t have been anywhere near.”</p><p>“Oh,” Zolf breathes, “Wilde.”</p><p>“He had a knack for getting into”—Wilde looks away unexpectedly, swallows hard—“all kinds of trouble.”</p><p>Zolf hadn’t thought, hadn’t realized—of course Bosie was dead. Long before he tried to flay Wilde alive. “Oscar. Sweetheart, I…” 

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<p>Out of instinct he caresses Wilde’s face, but Wilde shakes his head and takes Zolf’s hand gently down again. The same kiss to his palm. An apology, Zolf’s starting to learn. “Plenty of lives to mourn and not enough time,” Wilde says with false cheer, flashing some half-pretended smile. When he meets Zolf’s gaze, his eyes are clear, at the very least. “No sense dwelling on what we can’t change. More deserving people worthy of our attentions, and so on.”</p><p>“You can mourn, Wilde. I just…” He doesn’t touch Wilde’s scar again, but his eyes flicker to it pointedly. “You don’t have to punish yourself for…” He sighs. “Gods—you know this isn’t your fault, right? He wasn’t… it isn’t your doing. He’d have found you either way.”</p><p>“It’s not really…” Wilde says vaguely, and then looks up. “That’s not quite it. Regardless, it’s not like that anymore. This scar’s become no less part of me than your tattoos are part of you, and I should be quite sorry to see those gone. No,” he says, talking over Zolf’s objection. “No, I’ve told you now. It’s over; let it be finished as well. Let’s move on from this gloomy mood, we have much more important matters at hand.” 

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<p>Wilde holds Zolf’s hips still, rolls his own against him. Incredulous, Zolf rolls his eyes. “You’re insatiable, you know that?”</p><p>“You put your hands all over my body and take the better part of a month to take my clothes off, and you expect me to <em>behave</em> myself? Inconceivable arrogance. I shouldn’t like to live in your world.”</p><p>“Well, tough; you already do. Turn over.”</p><p>“And then what?” Wilde teases; but he does as he’s told. Zolf’s hands find home in the planes of his back as his thighs settle beside either flank; and in thirty minutes’ time Zolf will have worked up sweat kneading him loose, something Wilde will find inexplicably alluring, and Wilde will try to lick the salt off him entire, nibbling bites into his skin that Zolf won’t bother to heal.</p><p>With painted firelight on their skin, they’ll make the long, languid sort of love that turns Wilde wordless, sighs turned to cries turned to lingering moans; and in the morning Zolf will wake to find Wilde already gone, the sheets mussed in memory of his form. Zolf will venture out to find him already sitting ramrod straight, distilling his informaton, his mouth thin in thought, reaching for tea with deliberate grace—but for now, there is this. Their new, small intimacies. Wilde warm and sighing under his hands—alive, present, inexplicably his.</p><p><br/>
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